Vice City The Time of Your Life
by Voracious
Summary: There are a lot of stories to tell in Vice City. Some bloodier than others. A GTA story of crime and guns in four parts.
1. Part One

The Time of Your Life - Part One

Author's Note: Man, this is so different from what I usually write. It's nice to cut loose and write something that isn't going to turn into some sprawling epic or touchy-feely. I feel so rebellious. LOOK OUT! THE CANADIANS CAN SWEAR! Also, on an unrelated note, VCPR was always my favourite station.

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"Fuck!" Martin Lubello yelled, laying on the horn as the car shot across the intersection in front of him, feet all but stomping a hole through the floorboards as he braked. He hadn't even been going that fast, but the car fishtailed briefly on the rain-slicked road, and he swore again, leaning out the window to bellow after the retreating tailights, "You fuckers! Fuckin' pissant shit-suckers! Learn to fuckin' drive or keep off the fuckin' road, assholes!" For good measure, although there was no way they could see him, he flipped them the finger before settling back into the driver's seat with a grunt. "Sorry." he said as an afterthought, looking into the rearview mirror.

"That's perfectly allright." the woman said stiffly, although her companion said nothing. She looked as though she'd rather be anywhere, even hoofing it out there in the storm and the dark, than sitting there in the back of Lubello's cab. She smoothed the legs of her expensive looking black slacks and said, "Could we get going, please? We're already late."

"Sure thing, ma'am." Lubello said, remembering to flick on his turn signal as he took a right.

_Tight ass, _he thought.

Lubello didn't think he was asking much out of life. He was a good man, mostly; paid his taxes without complaint (much), went home to his wife every night (usually), and always put at least a fiver into the collection plate on Sundays (grudgingly). The truth was, he spent so much of his time trying so hard to toe the line at home, that his job really _was _about the only place he could cut loose. While most of his customers couldn't give a rat's ass if he used a colourful phrase or two, usually so stoned off their rockers they would have hailed him as the messiah if he'd asked, every now and again you got people like the broad in the back and her date, who had to snag a taxi because their driver had the night off.

To cover up their disapproving sniffs, Lubello flipped the radio on and twiddled the dial until he heard a familiar theatrical voice. "Fuckin' Chavez, man." he announced, aware he was swearing now only to further irritate his fare in response to her snooty glare but not caring. "What a corker. You listen to this shit? He's got everythin' on here. Fuckin' hippies, nudists, psychics, all that weird shit."

"So I hear." the woman's date said flatly.

Grinning to himself, Lubello rubbed his paunch and headed towards the Malibu, thinking of the salami sandwich in the glove compartment. It was the little things that made life worth living, really.

And in Vice City, you took what you could get before someone bigger took it away from you.

Lubello had come over with his wife from New York less than five years ago. No mistake, New York was a badass city, where you were just as likely to pick up a fare as you were a gun at the back of your neck each time you pulled over. His wife had insisted on the move, as much for his own safety as lured by the stories from her sister of sandy beaches, margaritas, and high living.

What the fat, smug bitch _hadn't _talked about, of course, were the gang wars, the pokey apartments, and the sex on every corner.

While Vice City had more than enough of it's share of crimes to heft on the scales along with the Big Apple, there was a slimy, unpleasant coating over the place that Lubello hadn't noticed in the other city. Here, all the sex and violence and drugs did itself up before it went out for the night, in stilletto heels or three piece suits or a pastor's collar. Lubello had never before seen a place where it seemed like everyone had their fingers in something they shouldn't, and everybody either pretended not to notice, or didn't care.

Lubello didn't care.

You had to make a living somehow.

"Malibu." he announced now, pulling over to the curb, deliberately further down than he could have parked from the covered enterance in the rain. "Please yourselves. That'll be twenty-six-fourty-five."

Not surprisingly, they didn't stay to chat after the man had shoved the money into Lubello's outstretched hand. No tip, either. As they stalked past him, hurrying towards the indoors, Lubello could see the woman's mouth moving angrily and the frustrated gestures she made in the chill air. Let them call his boss; Mary-Anne Stubenski was twice as wide as he was, twice as mean, and at least three times as colourful in her choice of words. If Lubello hadn't already been taken, he might have married the woman.

He had barely opened the glove compartment, however, when the back door opened to the cab.

"I'm on my break." Lubello yelled, not bothering to look around as he rooted inside.

"Yeah?" a man's voice, demanding. "How about an extra twenty? You still on break then?"

Reluctantly, Lubello looked over his shoulder. His fare was a man in his early thirties, tanned skin, hard, dark, arrogant, violent eyes, and touselled wet black hair. The hawaiian print blue shirt he wore was almost soaked through, as were his faded jeans, and even if he hadn't been able to see the dark suspicious shape under the shirt, Lubello instantly recognised the man as trouble. He'd seen the exact same eyes on his nephew, a violent young man with a hair-trigger temper and a healthy drug habit, and again almost every night on the evening news.

"I might be." he replied cautiously, combing his moustache. "Where you wanna go?"

The man grinned; good looking in the dangerous, hardened way that drew so many stupid doe-eyed young girls. "Around." he said. "I'm lookin' for someone. I'll tell you when to stop." And he pointed past Lubello through the windshield at the car idling ahead of him at the Malibu's entrance.

Lubello looked, a little uneasy at taking his eyes off his passenger for the moment, and his jaw dropped. Forgetting all about caution, he leaned forward. "That's the fucker cut me off!" he bawled.

The car was white, long-slung like the pants the young assholes preferred to wear these days, with the typical flame decals painted down the side. Under the thrum of the rain, Lubello thought he could hear the faint _­thump-thump-thump_ of a music beat, and as he watched, a tall, scrawny young man, face obscured by shadows, hurried out of the club and tossed something in the backseat before he slid into the passenger's seat.

"Young fucks." Lubello said angrily. "No respect. I shoulda known."

The hard-eyed man behind Lubello leaned forward like a doberman on alert as the car's engine revved once. "Well?"

Lubello looked back at him. He wasn't a nervous man by nature, or a cowardly one, but he could smell trouble on the wind like a rabbit in a field. The smart thing to do would be to say no. This close to the club, the sidewalk choked with people, he didn't think he'd be risking a bullet in the eye by turning him down. He could say a happy goodbye, take cab back and catch a bus home, and forget all about it. Some bad shit was going to be going down somewhere tonight.

Instead, maybe thinking of his wife sitting in her armchair with her cold cream on watching the television and waiting for him, or maybe of re-runs and the same-old-same-old, he heard himself saying, "Sure. Why the fuck not?"

The man relaxed almost imperceptibly and grinned again, leaning back in his seat. "Thanks. This is gonna sound really stupid, but follow that car, okay?"

"You're the boss." Lubello said, and as they pulled away from the curb, he flicked on the fare timer.


	2. Part Two

The Time of Your Life - Part Two

Author's Note: Action/Adventure probably isn't the proper category for this. But there's no "noir" or "black comedy" or anything else approaching close section, so that will have to do. I'm more concerned with pacing and development than I am getting to any of the big things in store in Part Three. I don't want to drag things out, but nor do I want to press them uncomfortably together. It's only one night's events. Incidentally, this story updates once per week.

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Lubello headed west with the bright eyed young killer in the back seat, and found himself wondering for the first time in years what it might have been like to have a son.

Not that his passenger inspired any great stirrings of paternal interest within him. Quite the opposite. But he found himself curious as to wether or not he might have done any better by a boy than this one's father had. Lubello's own father had been a cheerfully abusive rotund police dispatcher who had presented his son with an endless parade of women to call Mama, none of which had ever remained longer than a week. When he was younger, he had promised himself that he would be different, that he would never reward a good report card with a can of beer or punish with a lit cigarette.

What a fuckwad _that _turned out to be.

When you're young, Lubello thought often, waiting for the light to change, all you think about is getting some little brat outta some broad to carry on the family name, like it would turn you into a man somehow.

Fuck _that_. 'Get your head out of your ass', was one of Lubello's favourite sayings, maybe the only real piece of wisdom his late-great father had imparted. Still, he wondered if he might have done any better than the poor sap who was probably prematurely gray from the stress of having a kid like the one in his backseat now. Lubello didn't think the dark shape glimpsed under the wet fabric of the shirt was a curling iron; thinking about it gave him a twinge of unease, however, made him wonder if maybe he hadn't done the wrong thing by picking the guy up, so instead he focused on following the white car glimpsed like a fleeting ghost through the increasing sheets of rain. Nobody had to tell _him _how to tail someone; he wasn't going to hang on too close and wind up with his brains redecorating the interior of his cab for his troubles.

"You smoke?" the killer in the back asked suddenly.

"Yeah. You want one?" It was against company policy for the cabbies themselves to smoke, lest it irritate the fares, but customers were free to smoke as they pleased. As a result, Lubello usually spent an hour each night scrubbing at the worst of the burns in the fake leather seats and sweeping ashes and butts out onto the pavement.

"No. But go ahead and light up if you want."

"Yeah?" Lubello said, pleased. "Good deal, man." He fished eagerly into the breast pocket of his stained white company issue shirt for his crumpled pack. "You ain't worried about lung cancer or any of that shit then, huh?"

The killer laughed, low and surprisingly pleasant. "Here? In Vice? Christ no, man. Only place you can get fresh air here is in the emergency room."

"Got that right." Lubello agreed. He stuck a ciagrette between his lips and lit it one-handed while driving with his lighter, the useless talents of the long-time smoker. He inhaled contentedly and blew smoke in a gray cloud above his head where it hung thickly. None of that unfiltered shit; why bother? It did the trick, though, and his nerves settled somewhat, placated by years-old habit.

They drove in silence for a while, Lubello careful to keep a safe distance behind. He wasn't overly concerned with being recognised; this late on a Friday night with paychecks buring holes in cheap suit pockets and liqour being lined up in anticipation on bars, the streets were choked with dozens of identical cabs, shunting agressively about one another for coveted fares from rich couples. Once, when he had first begun driving cabs back in New York fifteen years ago, Lubello would have been amoung them, causing angry blares of horns from other motorists as he swerved up to curbs and bellowed in competition with the other young roosters.

Now?

Man, fuck _that _noise.

Ahead of them, the white car glided to an uneven stop at a traffic light, and Lubello watched an indistinct dark shape lean out of the passenger's side and holler something lost in the rumble of rain and traffic at a slender, huddled female shape walking quickly along the sidewalk under an umbrella. From the way she flinched and quickened her pace, Lubello didn't think it had been the Lord's blessing. "These young fucks." Lubello grunted, tapping ash onto the floor. "Are you seein' this? Man. I bet he's been foolin' himself for the past twenty years that one day he'll get his meat pulled by somethin' that isn't a dirty gym sock."

The killer laughed again. "I like you. You ain't bad. Mind if I call you Lu?"

Lubello didn't ask how he knew his name; his picture and pertinient information were fixed reassuringly for all socialites to see on the dashboard. "Yeah, sure. Why not?"

In the rearview mirror, the killer grinned, pleased. "Good deal, man." he echoed.

He didn't offer up a name of his own. Lubello didn't ask.

Lubello had learned a great many things in his lifetime, and in his opinion tying his shoes and learning not to shit in his pants as a toddler had all been worth jack compared to knowing when to keep your nose out of other people's business. The people that didn't follow that happy rule were frequently called 'innocent bystanders' by the good-looking and eerily earnest newscasters on television at the end of the day. Lubello called them jackasses, although never in front of his wife, who always clucked sympathetically at the nightly death toll on the screen.

Abruptly, the killer leaned forward, head between the two front seats. This close, Lubello could see how tired he actually was; his eyes were slightly red, shadows beginning underneath, and there was at least a day's growth of stubble darkening his jaw. "Fuck." he said, almost conversationally. "I know where they're going."

Lubello blew smoke out of the side of his mouth to avoid his customer getting an eyefull. "You want me to drop you off somewhere?"

The white car rounded a corner ahead of them, and Lubello accelerated a little to keep it in sight while he waited for a reply. The killer seemed to be making up his mind; finally, he shook his head and dropped back into the seat heavily. "Not just yet. I need you a while longer, Lu. But take me to the Pole Position Club, yeah? I need to pick somebody up."

In a place like Vice City, where sex could be bought for a bill of almost any minor denomination from nearly every doorway and street corner, if you were a new cab driver and you didn't know where the strip clubs were, you learned. Fast. On his first night on the job alone, Lubello had driven thirteen seperate customers to different strip joints, two of which had been a pair of hysterically giggly college girls, blushing furiously as they ran out and into the neon-lit doorway.

The Pole Position was by and large the most popular, however. If you had the cash to get in. Although Lubello had never darkened it's doorway, he had heard many a customer drunkenly lamenting the cover charge. Which was understandable; no chubby chicks waving an acne-ridden ass in your face while you drank a two-dollar beer there. Lubello occasionally drove the voluptuous, flat-bellied, hard-eyed young women home at night. The Pole Position was as close to classy as it was possible for a strip club to get, and it made Lubello's mouth water to think of all the money the owners must pull in on a nightly basis.

When they pulled up outside along the curb, Lubello had to sandwich himself in behind another idling cab disgorging a pair of staggering men in four-hundred dollar suits that were promptly ruined by the downpour. His stomach rumbled plaintively, and Lubello sat back in the seat with a comfortable creak, stubbing the smouldering remains of his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray, thinking with relish on the sandwich that still waited for him. "You know I gotta keep the meter runnin' while you're in there, yeah?"

Slicking his hands back through his drying hair to tame the unruly waves rising, the killer raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeah, sure. Gotta make a living. Or you could come in with me now for a minute and we can call that little detour even." His eyes flicked down to Lubello's hands on the steering wheel, lighting briefly on the smudged and scuffed wedding band. "Or you can wait here. No skin off of my back."

Lubello hesitated. If he went in 'for a minute' and ended up waiting instead for an hour while the guy enjoyed himself, he risked having someone see his cab there and reporting him to his boss, and if Stubenski was heavy-handed with complaining yuppies, it was nothing compared to how brutal she could be to employees screwing around on her time. Even as he thought it, however, he realised he was unsnapping his seatbelt. "Sure, okay."

"You sure? I don't want to get you in trouble with the missus, Lu."

"I said okay, didn't I?" Lubello grumbled, heaving his not unconsiderable bulk out of the car, and thinking of the cold cream on his wife's face at this time of night and the stale smell of their bedroom.

He thought he saw an appreciative gleam in the killer's eye.

The killer passed a neat fold of bills to a towering, impassive white man at the door who barely spared them a glance as they passed by. The narrow hallway was alive with the frenetic pump of music, and smelled heavily of aerosol spray, some neutral scent designed to cover up the cloying odors of sweat and testosterone. Putting his hand on the smooth white doors, the killer turned to Lubello and said, "Stick close, okay?" before pushing his way inside.

Just one glimpse inside these doors would have been enough to keep Lubello in happily varied and potent jerk-off material for most of his adolescent life. If there was class here, there was also sex gleaming from every available polished surface, clad in tight net stockings, string bikinis, or nothing at all. On the center stage, a pretty and petite spanish woman with a glorious fall of dark hair and perky breasts swung her hips with a dancer's ease as she shrugged out of a white shirt made out of some clinging material for her rapt audience, but she wasn't the only one; throughout the room Lubello saw women of every colour and age serving drinks or writhing astride the laps of men in expensive suits. While many of these men were grinning so widely Lubello thought it was a wonder the tops of their heads simply didn't topple off, others gazed up at the women with detached, vague, oddly thoughtful expressions, drinking martinis as bare flesh slid over them.

A tall, leggy blonde with high, jutting breasts barely contained within a gleaming red leather corset winked at Lubello as she passed, her hip twitching out to brush against his. _This _was the appeal he saw in strip joints; not the bare bodies, not the tits, not the drinks. The fact that here, an ugly man with a gut was as attractive as a young man in a leather jacket with a pompadour to these sex-dealing vampires as long as you had a fist of bills ready. There was no discerning between the homely and the blessed, and the sharp, avaricious eyes of the women marked each the same as the other.

There was a queer sort of comfort in it Lubello could never find in church. The notion that even if the world might end one day, with a hundred dollar bill in his pocket he could still be a king for an evening.

The killer wound his way through the bodies like a wolf through the trees and Lubello followed, although less gracefully. He found himself stopped behind his benefactor at the table of a long, lanky young man in a cheap white suit with a permanently petulant face behind the avid attention which he locked upon the dancer on stage, now minus most of her clothing except for an unconcealing string that vanished into the crack of her ass. The young man's expression darkened when the killer slapped his palm on the table for attention, and he groaned when he saw who it was. "Aw, no." he said, and Lubello immediately picked on the strident, high-strung and demanding tone of a New Yorker. "Aw, _no_. Not tonight. Fuck that, you can just turn around and go right on out. I'm busy. Or I will be."

"Eddie, you're not going to get busy with any one of these chicks tonight unless you're packing a roll of hundreds in your pocket." the killer snapped. "And unless you've pulled yourself outta the gutter even a little since I last saw you, which I doubt, you've still got people walking all over your head. Now come on, I need you."

"I said no!" Eddie yelped, snatching his arm away when the killer grabbed for it and knocking his drink over into his lap. He leapt to his feet, staring at the spreading stain on his crotch. "Jesus! Fucking great, just great, see what you made me do?"

Unconcerned, the killer grabbed the young man's arm again. "Saves you the trouble of having to piss yourself later. Now come on."

This time, the young man allowed himself to be lead, head dropped sullenly. Lubello followed obediently. On the way out, he saw the blonde again; she was sitting astride the lap of a balding man in a cheap three piece suit and undoing his tie. She locked gazes with Lubello as her hips gyrated and waggled her tongue at him lewedly.

By the time he was out the door, he had already forgotten about her.

"Fuckin' rain." Eddie groaned as they stood under the entryway. "I swear to God, it's always fucking raining on me when you're around."

"Maybe it's just God making fun of you for all the pissing and crying you do." the killer replied. He was looking around curiously, peering through the rain.

Eddie snorted and finally noticed Lubello standing behind them. "Who the fuck're you?" he demanded.

"That's Lu. Lu's with me. And watch your fucking mouth." the killer responded absently. Apparently satisfied with whatever he saw in the darkened streets -- or _didn't _see -- he turned back towards them. "Here's how this is going to work. Eddie, you're gonna give Lu directions to your place, and Lu's gonna drive us there. I want you to get me a few things."

"And then?" Eddie said insolently, although he watched the killer as warily as an often-beaten cub might watch a larger bear.

"And then," the killer said, grinning, "then we're gonna have us a talk with some friends. A nice little chat."

Something about that grin made Lubello wondered if he shouldn't have jumped into his cab right then and left them there in the rain.


End file.
